Cadavra

Thanks! Back atcha!

• Despite not participating in the ground or space battles, Luke had the most pivotal role of anyone in the Battle of Endor, and not just as a personal fight to save his father’s soul. By keeping Vader occupied in the throne room, he prevented the Empire’s best pilot from hopping in a TIE and effortlessly gunning down Lando and Wedge before they had the chance to take out Death Star II. This also kept Palpatine’s attention on Luke, preventing the Emperor from using Battle Meditation to bolster the Empire’s space forces.

• The Empire filing a false report to the Senate that the Tantive IV’s passengers were all killed means that Bail and Breha Organa probably spent their last moments believing their daughter was already dead.

• Darth Vader’s mechanical arms technically didn’t make it impossible for him to use Force Lightning, just far more hazardous than it was worth. The power that becomes the lightning when it leaves the body is generated within, and once it escaped Vader’s stumps into his artificial limbs it would have at a minimum shorted out his prosthetics, and at most exploded them.

• How did the Empire build Death Star II so much faster than the first one? Part of it was simply due to the original’s construction working out the kinks through trial and error, giving the second a much clearer roadmap. However, maybe there was another factor: maybe DSII’s superlaser wasn’t actually a planet-killer. We don’t see it destroy anything larger than a capital ship, which is impressive but obviously needs vastly less power. Besides, DSII’s primary purpose was as a trap, so all the Empire really needed was to give the Rebels the story of another Death Star. Once the Rebellion was finished off and Luke was either turned or killed, the Empire could have then taken as much time as they needed to build a true second Death Star.

Thanks!

Here’s my custom box set containing my preferred preservations, fanedits, & extras. Each film gets a Netac 256GB flash drive (I was thrilled to find these; they go great with the Star Wars aesthetic: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082VZ47YV/). The container is a simple wooden picture-frame box I inherited, with a custom foam insert. Simple, but I’m really happy with it:

How about some new dialogue so Redeemed Ben’s last line isn’t “ow”? It would have to be small and done sparingly so as not to feel fake and out of place, but it would probably be doable and effective to find some samples of Adam Driver quietly saying “Rey,” “no,” and “I’m sorry” when he finds her dead.

I feel like we’ve been going around in circles on most of this, Testing, so I won’t waste either of our time going point-by-point (also, frankly I’m going to resist the urge to respond in kind to some of the more obnoxious lines).

Instead, I’ll just share one piece of sincere advice: it’s fine to be passionate about a movie you like and other people don’t, but trying to badger people into liking something never works. If anything, it’s more likely to leave people less inclined to take a fresh look at the thing you’re championing.

By your logic, how Rey beat Kylo Ren and why Holdo doesn’t tell Poe her plan need a logical basis.

First, Rey beating Kylo DID get a logical basis shown in the film itself pretty clearly. The movie went out of its way to (1) establish via her staff that Rey has experience with melee weapons, (2) demonstrate the power of Chewie’s bowcaster, (3) show Kylo getting shot with the bowcaster, (4) linger on Kylo’s wound before the duel, and (5) show Rey firmly on defense until she lets the Force in. This aspect of TFA, at least, is actually a master class in showing rather than telling; all the pieces are patiently doled out IN THE MOVIE ITSELF. I don’t think any of the TROS elements I’m criticizing come anywhere near that close.

Second, I do think Holdo not telling Poe the plan was poorly handled in TLJ, as well, and there should have been a real explanation for why she didn’t. Did you assume that I don’t think that?

The audience has no reason at that point to believe that Vader is Luke’s father. That’s NOT how foreshadowing works.

You seem to have misread what I wrote again. I didn’t say those elements were foreshadowing or that anyone would suspect Vader was Luke’s father. I said they fit perfectly with the ESB reveal and take on new and deeper meaning when viewed through that lens, regardless of original intent. Which they obviously do.

Also, by your logic, Snoke being a carbon copy of Palps in TFA & TLJ as well as the latter’s theme playing when he’s mind-probing Rey in TLJ is foreshadowing of Palpatine’s return.

I don’t see how my logic says anything of the kind, and frankly just the thought of trying to figure out how it would tires me out.

How, exactly?

By me watching Episodes VII and VIII after having seen IX and not feeling any newfound, Palpatine-related interest, that’s how (if anything, it got in the way of all the elements I was interested in). In fact, the most amazing things about my first post-TROS viewings of the previous movies was how I didn’t feel like they were leading up to anything Palpatine-related at all. They didn’t feel to me at all like they connected to TROS. And I am immensely grateful for that, because it helps me continue to enjoy those films on their own terms (even if I do have to settle for swapping out TROS for my own fan script in my personal headcanon).

If you enjoyed them and found meaning in the trilogy as a satisfying whole, great. I would never even think of trying to stop you. But that simply wasn’t my experience, nor was it the experience of most of the friends with whom I enjoy Star Wars.

Except the “Rey Palpatine” storyline ISN’T about family drama.

You’re reading too much into a simple phrase. It’s drama. It’s related to family. That’s all “family drama” means.

it adds to Rey’s core belief of self-worthlessness, whilst also reinforcing that the saga is about the conflict between the Skywalkers and Palpatine himself, with his heir basically flipping him off when she adopts the Skywalker name to honor Luke and Leia.

I don’t see “Rey’s core belief of self-worthlessness” being a thing, sorry. I know it’s a point you’re passionate about, I’ve read some of your arguments about it, but I just don’t see her that way. If that interpretation is true and meaningful to you, then again, more power to you. It simply doesn’t factor into my interpretation. (I also don’t care all that much for her adoption of the Skywalker name. Oh well.)

Fair, but Anakin still brought balance for almost 30 years.

Yeah, it’s fair to say the ST doesn’t completely ignore the issue, but it sure doesn’t treat it as significant. If they were gonna use Palpatine, I would very much preferred a meatier treatment of it.

Subjective.

That’s one of the most important points here. MOST of what we’re arguing about is subjective. Yes, you inferences mean most of the story’s events make enough sense from a canon perspective, and enjoying it on that level, as a package deal with the theorizing and the reference books and the other supplements is one thing. And yes, some unanswered questions are good in movies (mainly about themes, symbolism, tertiary plot points, etc.). But when discussing a film’s merits as a film, the core experience has to stand on its own, relying only on the other films in the same series. It must be digestible to casuals and fanboys alike, with as few obstacles as possible to both groups’ understanding and satisfaction.

To make another comparison, I mostly liked Solo, and I loved Maul’s cameo at the end, which I understood instantly because I followed The Clone Wars and Rebels. But I can also separate my personal enjoyment of the product from from my recognition that including Maul was a bad move from a general-audiences filmmaking standpoint, because it needlessly confused the hell out of a lot of people who didn’t know why a guy they last saw die in a movie from 1999 was suddenly back and running a crime cartel.

Same with TFA and TLJ, by your logic.

Sure. I have no problem agreeing that both films have things that aren’t adequately explained, although in TFA and TLJ those things do not detract from my enjoyment nearly as much because I find them far stronger and more enjoyable movies overall.

Except it IS impressive, because the Knights of Ren were trained and are skilled fighters - they’re more skilled than stormtroopers, who use blasters.

Most skilled normal fighters (outside of Mandalorians) are no match for a well-trained Jedi or Dark Jedi.

And again, there was no indication Palps knew they were Force-sensitive.

If Snoke knew, then Palpatine would have known.

And how do you know they’re on Exegol to specifically do Palps’ bidding?

Because they do Palps’ bidding while on Exegol. Ben tries to reach Palpatine and they try to stop him.

I never said that, it’s just Palps personally wanted to be MORE powerful.

Well then if it’s just a matter of what he wanted, then any old able-bodied Force-sensitive would suffice. Guy would’ve been smart to dispatch some henchmen to search the galaxy for a few, just in case Oochi did something stupid like get himself killed in the desert while searching for Palpatine’s granddaughter.

Is there something wrong with that? No?

Sure there is. It robs the scenario of moral or thematic depth, and needlessly creates practical complication and confusion.

This, alone, IMPLIES it works that way.

If something seems to work a certain way, and the best answer for why is circular (it works that way because we see it work that way), then it’s either a flawed concept or a flawed execution.

Palpatine was OVERCONFIDENT. It’s something Luke spells out in RotJ: “Your overconfidence is your weakness.”

Sure, but overconfident doesn’t mean incompetent, and it certainly never has in Palpatine’s case.

The “HOW Palpatine came back” isn’t important to the story - the fact that Palpatine SURVIVED is.

And facts require a logical basis in the story itself. This is Fiction Writing 101.

I advise you to re-watch that scene. It’s Beru who says that, and Owen says that is what he’s afraid of.

Which….is all I said.

Obi-Wan was sad that Luke’s father - a good friend - was killed by Vader […] is about Luke leaving and how Owen can’t accept that - this implies he didn’t want Luke’s father to leave Tatooine as well and avoid being a farmer like himself (Owen) and Beru.

Of course those are the initial, superficial meanings of both scenes. That’s not the point. The point is that the scenes also have hooks and hints at something more which fit perfectly with the revelation that Vader is Anakin, regardless of whether that was the original intention.

Except Palpatine’s return DOES enrich the ST. He’s been the mastermind all this time from the start, pulling the strings behind [etc.]

I do not find anything in Episodes VII or VIII more interesting when viewed in the context of Palpatine being above Snoke and by extension everything else.

Just a point, Rey already deals with her parents believing she’s worthless in TLJ - she doesn’t care about them anymore, and now has the Resistance become her newfound family who’ll give her validation and belonging.

That’s exactly my point — the question of Rey’s family already got a satisfying resolution in VIII, and in a proper Episode IX that resolution could have informed her struggle as the story moved onto dealing with the stage that had been set for the final phase of the war. Instead of letting that resolution stand on its own, Abrams and Terrio felt the need to reopen the case, cramming an all-new (and much more repetitive) family drama into a final chapter that was already overstuffed with half-baked ideas and dangling threads.

On that topic, Rey DOESN’T deal with two (I’m assuming the other one is “They were nobody”) - she deals with ONE. When she says her parents were nobody, it meant they had no actual reason to care about her - they hated her, they threw her away like garbage, they thought she was WORTHLESS.

Huh? Of course she deals with two (contradictory) revelations: “they were random bums who sold her for drinking money,” and “they were heroic relatives of the Emperor who sacrificed themselves to protect her.”

Yes, his body’s literally decaying and has to use a life support machine, and the Sith clearly haven’t returned by TRoS (“The Sith are reborn, the Jedi are dead!” “Nothing will stop the return of the Sith!”). The prophecy is that Anakin would destroy the Sith - and he did.

He isn’t dead. He’s a Sith. Through him the Sith are active and powerful enough to have been — in your words — “pulling the strings behind Snoke, Kylo Ren, the First Order, Luke’s exile, the destruction of his Jedi Order and the bridging of Rey and Kylo Ren’s minds.” The state of his physical body doesn’t change any of that.

I already explained why this is wrong.

And that explanation doesn’t convince me. Sorry, but it doesn’t.

I’m pointing out your hypocrisy, you dislike Palpatine’s undoing of the Chosen One yet literally reinforced the undoing of the OT heroes’ accomplishments.

First, I didn’t say I disliked undoing the prophecy, and in fact I laid out ideas for how undoing the prophecy could have been done well. What I said was I didn’t like TROS’s failure to deal with the significance of undoing the prophecy.

Second, you’re quoting from one of two alternate ST ideas I tossed out in that thread — and one I specifically said was a less ambitious option than the one that would have been my own ideal.

But Palpatine still essentially committed suicide, he was the one who started shooting lightning in the first place - if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have been killed. If the same thing happened between him and Vader in RotJ, he WOULDN’T have survived.

There’s that word “essentially” again. Even if that was the writers’ intention, the fact that Rey effectively gets off on a technicality despite the fact that she consciously acted toward the very outcome she was told would assure his victory—killing Palpatine—makes it all the sillier. It’s like some bizarre space-fantasy inversion of suicide-by-cop.

First off, it’s an INFERENCE. It doesn’t have to be spelled out to you.

“Inference” is not a magic word that papers over shoddy plot construction. Good stories are not fill-in-the-blank activity books.

Secondly, all the Knights of Ren are dead, there was no indication he knew any of them were Force-sensitive, and he certainly didn’t know where they were specifically at even before their deaths.

They weren’t dead in the years between Kylo becoming their master and the Battle of Exegol. They show up on Exegol to do his bidding. If they and Kylo served Snoke, Palpatine could have manipulated Snoke to send one his way. And “master of the Knights of Ren” wouldn’t be a very impressive title for Kylo if they were just normal, no-Force thugs.

Thirdly, there was no indication any of his cultists were Force-sensitive.

See, “odds are at least a few people among thousands upon thousands of dark Force worshippers can use the Force” actually IS a logical, acceptable inference based on existing information and common sense.

Lastly, he targeted Rey and then Ben because she was his granddaughter (and he’s foreseen what she’d become) and Ben was the Chosen One’s grandson.

The idea that only a Force user that powerful could contain a spirit as powerful as his would be an adequate explanation—except TROS didn’t use it. (I know, I know, “inference.”)

EDIT: One more point about Rey killing Palpatine. The plot device of something bad happening if a Jedi kills a Sith the wrong way (which Star Wars has used many times over the years) has never been about the mechanics or technicalities of the cause of death, but about the Jedi’s intentions and emotions behind the act, and the moral message they convey.

TROS takes this simple trope and reduces it to a matter of the rules of a brand-new supernatural power — rules which the movie never sees fit to share with the audience. Kill Sheev out of hatred for him? He gets your body. Kill Sheev out of love for your friends? He still gets your body. Kill Sheev by deflecting his lightning? (With no obvious distinction from the amount of lightning he pumped into Luke OR the amount of lightning Mace Windu reflected back at him.) He apparently DOESN’T get your body. Why? No idea!

If a Sith Lord’s own lightning cancels out the ultimate power of the Sith — something every Sith has apparently done since Darth Bane — then one might reasonably expect SOMEBODY in a thousand years to realize that maybe they should stop using lightning. It also makes Palpatine look kind of dumb that he keeps pouring on the juice as it comes back to hit him — although, to be fair, one can hardly blame the poor guy for not expecting Force lightning to suddenly behave differently than it behaved every other time it was used in the saga.

Further, removing the dialogue doesn’t solve the problem of gathering such a large force so quickly. You would need added scenes to do that.

To clarify, I’m not proposing a better justification for assembling the fleet so quickly. I’m proposing eliminating the very idea that the fleet was assembled so quickly to begin with, but rather that it was already assembled by the time TROS begins. Poe’s lines are a hurdle to this change because, as one of the Resistance’s top leaders (and THE co-General by the time of the final battle), he would presumably have some idea of the fleet’s actual size.

The puppet show (which is incredible) builds up how Luke’s sacrifice has inspired the galaxy, but the dialogue I’m talking about suggests that the galaxy hasn’t been inspired and remains as hopeless as ever.

Beyond that, there’s the simple logistical problem. Even if the galaxy is receptive now, that’s a LOT of people and ships to find, recruit, prepare, and coordinate in just a couple hours of “send[ing] out a call for help for anybody listening.”

It is absolutely not fundamental, because it doesn’t actually progress the plot or change the characters in any meaningful way

Of course it changes a character in a meaningful way — Palpatine himself, from dead and gone to alive and threatening. And his being back IS the plot. It’s THE challenge of Episode IX.

“I am your father” had no set-up as well and, by your logic, makes ESB feel disjointed with ANH.

Not at all. First, even if Vader being Anakin hadn’t been decided when ANH was made, it’s still much clearer that there’s at least something more to the story than Obi-Wan first tells Luke—Obi-Wan looking visibly uncomfortable before he tells the lie, Owen telling Beru he’s afraid of Luke having too much of his father in him, etc. The ESB and TLJ reveals enrich what came before; the TROS reveal muddies it.

Second, “betrayed and murdered” is not framed as some huge, shocking revelation, and in fact it’s positioned at roughly the same point in Luke’s story that “my parents will come back for me” is positioned in Rey’s. “I am your father” is the shocking mid-point twist of the OT, just as “they sold you for drinking money” is for the ST. They come at roughly the same points in their respective trilogies, upending the assumptions each hero started with. Luke has the rest of his trilogy to figure out how to handle this one challenging revelation; Rey in effect has to come to terms with two, one after another.

That kind of upending is fine to do once in a three-part story; doing it multiple times with the exact same question for the exact same character within the same amount of story is just juvenile. It’s the sort of thing that gives comic books a reputation for convoluted long-term histories as new writers come in and mess with what their predecessors did, but stories with distinct beginnings, middles, and ends are supposed to be better than that.

Also, I endorse everything Knight of Kalee just said.

Palpatine is essentially dead until he rejuvenates himself with the dyad’s life energy

“Essentially dead”? Come on.

after that he is killed for good, fulfilling the prophecy once again.

Is it for good, though? There is absolutely nothing in the film itself that tells us why we should be confident this is the case.

And I see you’re fine with Luke failing to create the Jedi or stuff like that.

Huh? No I’m not. And I’m not sure what that has to do with this discussion.

Rey never killed Palpatine herself, she just reflected his lightning onto his face - he essentially committed suicide.

We could just as easily say that if Rey had swung when Palpatine wanted her to, it wouldn’t be her “killing Palpatine herself”; it would have been her lightsaber blade killing him. The tool is not the act, and does not change the intention or causality behind the act.

Palpatine has to be killed by another Force-sensitive in order for Sith essence transfer to even work in the first place. Why do you think he didn’t commit suicide or have a non-Force-sensitive kill him a long time ago?

Even if that’s how it was intended to work (which is not stated anywhere in the film), then presumably he could have transferred into one of the Knights of Ren. Or an able-bodied Exegol cultist (presumably at least some were Force-sensitive). Or had his underlings scour the galaxy for healthy young Force-sensitives.

Look, if and when I ever develop an interest in debating the decision to make Rey a Palpatine, I will post in the relevant thread. But I don’t yet have any such interest, and that’s not what this particular thread is for.

I didn’t say anything about the dictionary definition of the word “nobody”; I was talking about the meaning and usage of the “Rey Nobody” label among this community. It denotes one of the two general directions to take ST edits. That’s it.

I don’t want to derail this thread by relitigating something that has been argued about to death numerous times on multiple threads, so I’ll just point out that (a) “Rey Nobody” is shorthand for “no familial connection at all,” not just “no famous parents”; and (b) a retcon that hides behind “well TECHNICALLY…” is still a retcon.

Agreed, which again is why I’m a Rey Nobody guy. But there’s something to be said for maximizing the potential of both versions of the story in separate projects.

Awesome! I look forward to seeing it!

Here’s a crazy thought for trying to make the Rey Palpatine reveal feel less like a contradiction that comes out of nowhere in TROS: what about cutting the “they were nobody” reveal out of TLJ?

I don’t know how well this could be executed, but maybe it would be possible to have Rey cut Kylo off before he has a chance to tell her, going from him teasing the truth straight to Rey reaching for the lightsaber? If this could be pulled off, viewers would come away from that scene thinking there still is an answer yet to be revealed, but it’s something so horrible that Rey can’t bear to face it at that point. Then the “your his granddaughter” scene would be a payoff worthy of such fears rather than a retcon undermining a previous revelation that had weight and significance all its own.

Disclaimer: personally I’m firmly in the Rey Nobody camp. But this idea popped into my head during a brainstorming kick, so I figured I’d toss it out for consideration, just in case it can help the Rey Palpatine concept be the best it can be.

Apologies if this has been discussed already, but has any consideration been given to removing the implication that Lando and Chewie somehow managed to assemble the largest fleet we’ve ever seen, in a couple hours at most, in what the film strongly suggests is a 180-degree reversal of the dominant mood of the galaxy? Personally, I consider that and the dagger compass (which has already been brilliantly fixed in Ascendant) to be the two most logic- and suspension-of-disbelief-breaking moments in the entire Saga.

It seems to me that some dialogue cuts (ending Poe and Zorii’s heart-to-heart before the talk about thinking they’re alone/everyone giving up; then during the mission briefing scene cutting from Lando’s “That’s our chance” straight to the preparation montage & Finn’s “Leia never gave up…”) would be all it would take to let the audience infer that the fleet is the culmination of both the Resistance’s recruitment efforts in the year between TLJ & TROS and Luke’s sacrifice inspiring the galaxy (which of course Ascendant already strengthens in multiple ways), instead of something miraculously assembled at the last minute.

I am convinced Palpatine could have been resurrected for the Sequel Trilogy in an intelligent, narrative-serving way, but it would have required meeting four conditions:

1. Explain how in the film itself. Audiences saw him fall down a pit and explode in a moon-sized station that also exploded minutes later; if you’re going to tell audiences that wasn’t his end after all, then audiences are entitled to be satisfied that it makes sense before the credits roll. Passing off a question this fundamental to inference – in effect making audiences do homework simply to understand the story (whether in the form of reading supplemental material or piecing together a headcanon explanation themselves) – is just sloppy, lazy storytelling that disrespects the audience.

2. Reveal him early enough that he feels like he fits in the trilogy as a whole. My preference would be to at the very least hint at him in VII, but he would’ve had to be revealed no later than VIII. But by Episode IX, it was too late to do it without making the ST feel disjointed. Lucasfilm desperately needed an adult in the room to give Palpatine a hard veto, to tell Abrams and Terrio that the character had simply missed his window.

3. Confront the Chosen One ramifications head-on. Like it or not, the prequels gave cosmic, borderline-theological implications to Palpatine’s death. If he never actually died or was only briefly dead, if the Sith survived and continued planning in the shadows just as they did before The Phantom Menace, then the prophecy was wrong in some major way. Either Anakin was not the Chosen One, there was no Chosen One, or the balance it foretold was far less significant than its prophesized status would lead one to believe.

Now, this does not mean it couldn’t or shouldn’t be done, but it does mean the story has to take responsibility for the fallout of the decision – and no, giving Anakin one “bring back the balance” line doesn’t cut it. The idea that balance is never permanent and must be continually maintained is a good one, but is suggested so fleetingly that the line simply doesn’t suffice to account for the sheer scale of the retcon.

But it didn’t have to be that way. A differently-structured ST could have not only navigated this minefield, but done so in a way that enriched the PT rather than undermining it, by making the question of prophecy and the old Jedi Order’s reliance on it one of the new trilogy’s major themes. The groundwork for such a development was already laid in Revenge of the Sith, what with Yoda himself warning that the prophecy “misread, could have been.”

Have Luke and Rey discuss and debate whether the prophecy was correct, whether Anakin was the Chosen One after all, what “balance of the Force” even means. Have Anakin return as a Force spirit in a larger role to add his insight to the discussions. Hell, you could’ve even had Palpatine play on the heroes’ doubts by claiming to have created the prophecy to goad the Jedi into training the instrument of their own destruction. All of this could have given the ST some much-needed philosophical depth by diving into the question of predestination vs. free will, and brought things full circle by highlighting a failing of the old Jedi Order from which Rey and her eventual students could learn.

4. Finally, when you have a character come back from the dead in a story that’s meant to be a true ending rather than another midway point, you have to make clear why he can’t just come back again. John’s amazing Force Ghost edit achieves this in an elegant way, but absolutely nothing in vanilla TROS does. There is nothing in the official film that would prevent future storytellers from revealing that Palpatine had another supply of clone bodies to escape into stashed on Korriban, Malachor, Vjun, Wayland, or some other Sith planet that hasn’t been made up yet. Hell, nothing in the film even rules out the possibility that Palpatine’s spirit is already lurking inside Rey!

I sympathize with the desire to bring Palpatine back. I enjoyed and accepted Dark Empire back in the day. Ian’s magnificence in the role was one of the things that had me desperately trying to convince myself that I liked TROS as I drove home from the theater. And I have come around to the conclusion that it could have been the right decision for a different version of the Sequel Trilogy. But he simply didn’t fit with the Episodes VII and VIII we got, and the Episode IX we got botched the execution on every level.

The things that have been achieved on this edit are nothing short of astonishing. If any project has any chance of ever getting me to possibly accept TROS, it will be (the Rey Nobody version of) Ascendant.

Lots of thought and potential. I especially like your reimagining of the Imperial Remnant and Knights of Ren.

Totally valid. I was just thinking in the context of what could be done with a less ambitious rearrangement of existing elements.

By introducing Anakin and Padme as two young people with major formative experiences seemingly enabled by the weakness of the Old Republic (slavery allowed on Tatooine, the Senate’s refusal to stop Naboo’s invasion), The Phantom Menace actually provides what would have been the perfect setup to their relationship and eventual split…except the rest of the trilogy didn’t use it.

Instead of Padme being a fairly generic pacifist type, she and Anakin should both be politically hawkish and support Palpatine’s calls for a stronger executive power. (Hell, Padme & Palpatine were also from the same planet, and the latter was even introduced as an advisor to the former, but nothing is done with that connection other than one line in a single ROTS deleted scene.) This way, the two could bond not just over mutual attraction but also shared political convictions forged by the conflict that brought them together. Then in ROTS, Padme is objective and principled enough to recognize that Palpatine is going too far, whereas Anakin’s views remain clouded by his struggle with the dark side, the Jedi, etc. from the official movie.

Sadly, this reinterpretation couldn’t actually be done with the source material, but maybe it could be made easier to infer by cutting from AOTC Padme’s appeals to diplomacy, opposition to the Military Creation Act (a plot point that should probably go anyway to eliminate the coincidence of the Republic discovering a clone army made just for them at the EXACT MOMENT they’re debating whether to commission one), etc, along with perhaps some creative use of audio from other Natalie Portman roles. Sometimes cutting out obstacles to a particular interpretation is all you need to do to make something click.

Thinking smaller, the core elements of what we got could have made for a perfectly solid ST with a few tweaks. For instance…

EPISODE VII: A SHATTERED BALANCE

30 years after the Battle of Endor, the New Republic is established and a free galaxy has fallen into complacency. Leia Organa-Solo serves in the Galactic Senate, Han Solo adjusts to retirement as well as can be expected, and Luke Skywalker trains their son Ben along with a handful of students in the Jedi arts—with the help of Snoke, a surviving Jedi Master from the days of the Old Republic.

But when the deserting ex-stormtrooper Finn arrives to warn the Senate that an Imperial remnant calling itself the First Order is gathering strength in the Unknown Regions, Snoke—secretly a darksider in league with the First Order—reveals himself and accelerates his plans to retake the galaxy.

Responding to a distress call from the Jedi Temple, Han finds that Snoke has completed his seduction of Ben Solo, and in doing so decimated the Academy. The newly-christened Kylo Ren murders his father in a tense confrontation, and Chewbacca rescues the only two Jedi who haven’t been killed or captured—Luke and one student, a young orphan named Rey.

With Finn’s help, the grief-stricken heroes organize a plan of attack, infiltrating and destroying the First Order superweapon Starkiller Base…but not before it obliterates the New Republic’s capital. Leia assumes command of the New Republic’s surviving military forces, while Luke takes Rey to complete her training on the remote Jedi world of Ahch-To, just as Yoda had trained him on Dagobah decades before.

This would allow us to spend time with the heroes at peace and show a glimpse of the free galaxy they fought for in the OT. It would eliminate Han and Leia’s estrangement, give Luke a similar struggle with guilt without having to explain why he tapped out of the galaxy for years, introduce us to Ben Solo before things go to hell, and eliminate the controversy over Rey being skilled without Jedi training, all while preserving the good elements the ST gave us.

In particular, having Kylo’s turn, Han’s death (which, let’s face it, would probably be a Harrison Ford requirement no matter what), and the fall of Luke’s academy all happen simultaneously onscreen, as the immediate precursors to the trilogy’s central war, alleviates The Force Awakens’ implication that Luke, Han, and Leia’s lives all sucked before we see them again. Having characters meet tragic ends in the course of facing a new crisis is a lot easier to swallow than having them suffer losses, withdraw from their loved ones for years, regress to old habits, AND THEN meet tragic ends.

EPISODE VIII: THE LEGEND OF SKYWALKER

The broad strokes could be similar to The Last Jedi, especially the exploration on Luke’s mythic status (hence the new title). The above outline for A Shattered Balance leaves the exact circumstances of Kylo’s turn somewhat ambiguous, so there would still be room for a similar set of flashbacks as in the official TLJ. I don’t have strong feelings about whether Rey should be Luke’s daughter or remain a nobody, but this basic idea could work with either decision. Another possibility might be that Rey is the daughter of a darksider Luke was forced to kill years ago. [EDIT] I’d be fine with a version of the Canto Bight subplot pruned like Hal’s version, but for the sake of the trilogy as a whole perhaps it would be better if Finn and Rose’s mission was instead focused on finding allies to help what’s left of the New Republic regroup in the wake of the Starkiller disaster. [END EDIT]

EPISODE IX: POWER OF THE FORCE

😃 Maybe a little something like this:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/THE-RISE-OF-SKYWALKER-THE-TEAM-DALE-REWRITE-AVAILABLE-NOW/id/85493

My idea sequel trilogy would probably be something along the lines of the most recently-reported version of George’s ideas. Not necessarily the specifics of Maul surviving and bringing in Talon, but putting the challenges of postwar rebuilding front and center would have been perfect for making the trilogy a relevant part of a single story, making it feel more necessary and legitimate. The idea of a criminal underworld helmed by a darksider also would’ve made for a much more distinct threat than Empire 2.0 in the First Order.